Opinion

Half of the $200 billiion ad market pie is funded by mid-market and long-tail advertisers that keep the global ad engine running. But despite representing such a massive chunk of the marketplace, mid-market advertisers face many constraints with few tools to answer the most basic existential questions in advertising, writes Marilois Snowman, CEO & Founder of Mediastruction.

The Roku Channel was born in 2017 as a licensed third-party content hub to woo audiences toward streaming. Then, the channel began courting original content in 2021. The wider the content distribution, “the more engagement we can drive with our advertisers and the more we can monetize and invest in content,” said Katina Papas Wachter, head of ad sales and strategy at The Roku Channel.

TikTok doesn’t compete with Facebook or Instagram. Neither does Twitter, Pinterest or LinkedIn. Really. At least not according to the Federal Trade Commission in its antitrust complaint against Meta. But excluding TikTok is like a gift for Meta’s lawyers.

There is a ton of fear and hysteria right now on both the buy side and the sell side, as the death of the third-party cookie nears. But there are still plenty of powerful ways to target audiences that don’t involve technology, writes Erik Requidan, Founder and CEO of Media Tradecraft.

Knowing which partners and platforms have access to your data – and how they’re using it – isn’t always obvious. But understanding what makes you vulnerable is half the battle. David Blaszkowsky, head of strategy and development at Helios Data, details three hidden data risks every marketer needs to know – and what you can do about them.

The latest wave of gaming and ad tech consolidation has the industry exploring new advertising opportunities. But in-game ads require a very deep understanding of your audience – ad tech and gaming mergers “need to own their customer relationships bean to cup,” writes Ionut Ciobotaru, co-CEO of Verve Group.

Digital media buyers and planners don’t always understand why an ad works. The key to this critical missing information lies in the simplest of places: naming conventions and tagging, says Jackie Saplicki, global senior director of tech consulting and architecture at Media.Monks.

“On TV & Video” is a column exploring opportunities and challenges in advanced TV and video.  Today’s column is by Peer39 CEO Mario Diez. CTV remains one of the brightest spots in the advertising landscape. As with all emerging media, advertisers are eager to follow consumers wherever they go. And because CTV combines the time-tested […]

Thanks to the internet and its resulting innovations, international markets are within reach for most businesses.  However, with easy access comes great responsibility. Before you advertise on a global scale, here are some hard-earned lessons for avoiding common pitfalls from Jason Johnson, CMO of Cupid Media.

The cookieless future is daunting, and publishers who prepare now will have a competitive advantage over those who aren’t ready. But publishers will need more than unified ID initiatives, which could take years, writes Todd Tran, Chief Strategy Officer at Teads. Publishers should start now by prioritizing contextual signals and a content monetization strategy.

The free and open internet as we know it is not free at all: Someone somewhere is footing the bill so publishers can fund the creation of that “free” content.

When it comes to privacy legislation, denial often comes before compliance. When GDPR went into effect back in 2018, some companies in the US simply ignored it, opting to shut down or limit operations in the EU instead of adjusting their data privacy practices. But with privacy legislation in California (CPRA), Colorado (CPA) and Virginia (VCDPA) set to go into effect 2023, American businesses will have no choice but to accept and act, says Ines Henrich, VP of sales planning and media strategy at Aki Technologies.

TV inventory fragmentation means publishers need new ways in which to aggregate their inventory, connect with buyers and transact. To make TV convergence a reality, FreeWheel’s new GM Mark McKee plans to bolster the company’s role in the ecosystem as a player in cross-platform TV standardization and automation.

Machine learning and statistical models have evolved to provide an extremely sophisticated understanding of the contribution of each marketing investment and the interactions between them. But models can leave marketers vulnerable to misguided decisions and the underutilization of data and analytics, which inhibits them from realizing the full value of the insights the model can provide, says Alice K. Sylvester, Partner at Sequent Partners. 

Despite fragmentation and automation in TV inventory, marketers and brands have options to ensure advertising quality in their media buys. Ad quality is a “team sport” that requires industry-wide standards, writes Louqman Parampath, Roku’s VP of Product Management. But on top of that, “the best way for brands to ensure quality is to prioritize direct relationships with trusted platforms and publishers.”

Imagine: You are a political trader, and it’s 7 p.m. on a Friday night in October 2022. A customer needs to launch 13 CTV-focused campaigns that target districts in four states – immediately. Do you have the tools to make it happen?

88% of advertisers say they’re still using cookies – which is down from 97% in May last year, says Nicole Perrin, VP of Business Intelligence at Advertiser Perceptions. Cookies are eroding well ahead of Google’s “sunset date,” so publishers need contextual and cohort-based alternatives to stay competitive with a “one-to-some” offering.

Moments of connection that provide holistic experiences are on a journey to replace data-based advertising. And with the rise of technologies like blockchain and the metaverse that make consumers more connected than ever, it’s time for brands to accelerate that journey, says Azlan Raj, chief marketing officer of Merkle EMEA.

This year’s Upfronts need to continue the conversation about measurement that includes outcome-based guarantees in a linear and, eventually, convergent TV world. Otherwise, the TV industry risks falling further and further behind digital capabilities, writes Spencer Lambert, manager of product and partnership success at datafuelX.

BDG sees opportunity in the parenting vertical, and its acquisition last year of Some Spider was a major step toward ramping up its focus on parenting. The publisher plans to continue creating an ecommerce-focused experience across its portfolio that allows endemic brands to target users throughout their parenting journey, according to Sharon Mussalli, BDG’s EVP of revenue and operations.

Patients are wielding their power as consumers, and the healthcare industry needs to adapt to address their needs and expectations. Artificial intelligence might just be the key for healthcare marketers to unlock the new patient economy, says Stefanos Kapetanakis, GVP, Data and Technology, at Publicis Health Media. 

Proponents of addressable TV call it the future of advertising – a world where marketers can lean on hard data to better target their audience. But there’s still a long, long way to go from using advertising addressable TV as a brand-building asset to relying on it to sell products, writes Matt Krepsik, chief technology officer at Quotient.

While Topics API is a significant improvement from Google’s initial proposal, FLoC, there’s a more efficient and privacy-compliant window into interest-based advertising, says Stephanie Layser, News Corp’s VP of data, identity and ad tech. The answer? Seller-Defined Audiences (SDA).

In January, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) updated its guidance pertaining to the Health Breach Notification Rule, making changes that are significant for any company using health-related data. The new FTC guidance greatly increases the likelihood of enforcement actions against companies sharing health data for advertising purposes. David LeDuc, VP for public policy at the Network Advertising Initiative, breaks down the FTC’s new policy.

The lines between traditional and connected TV are getting blurrier. YouTube’s Brandcast event will be the same week as the Upfronts. Is it a move to declare the end of traditional TV? Probably not, writes Lauren Douglass, Channel Factory’s SVP of global marketing – perhaps it’s YouTube’s way of asking everyone to “stop treating CTV and linear TV as two completely separate entities.”

Marketers have recognized a 360-degree view of a customer isn’t the promised land it used to be. Rather than focusing on data volume, it’s more valuable for companies to ensure that whatever data they do possess is the correct data, says AJ Brown, CEO and co-founder of LeadsRx.

There’s an industry-wide scramble to replace third-party cookies – but it’s unreasonable to expect that just one solution will become a silver bullet, writes Garrett McGrath, SVP of product at Magnite. Solving for identity will require a range of solutions and more involvement on the sell side.

TV measurement providers in the streaming era have quite a lot of boxes to check. But according to Samba TV, all is naught without incremental reach. Marketers are missing out because the current CPM model “doesn’t deduplicate across screens,” said Samba TV’s CEO, Ashwin Navin.

Brand advertisers want the chance to engage with consumers in the metaverse. But platforms and publisher reactions are more … “meh.” The media industry should be cleaning up our current digital environments before “mucking up the metaverse,” writes Gavin Dunaway, product marketing lead at The Media Trust.

As ecommerce continues to boom, AI technology promises to revolutionize nearly every aspect of a retailer’s operations. Yet, the human aspect of tastemaking has never had more influence, says Catherine Leung, managing executive director, head of activation, Hearts & Science.